


wisteria and gypsophila, tulips and chrysanthemums

by eternalgoldfish



Category: Enola Holmes (2020)
Genre: F/M, First Kiss, Fluff, Marriage themes, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-02
Updated: 2020-10-02
Packaged: 2021-03-08 02:53:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 782
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26778421
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/eternalgoldfish/pseuds/eternalgoldfish
Summary: Tewksbury often thinks Enola wants him, but it’s difficult to discern when she usually appears with riddles on her tongue, a favour she would like him to help with, or a quest. She lets him fill the vase in her sitting room with wisteria and gypsophila, tulips and chrysanthemums, and knows she does not care for flowers. He equally knows that she carries around a book of their meanings, sees her toying with the corners of it when she thinks he isn’t looking.He knows he isn’t nearly as smart as her, thinks there isn’t a man alive who is, but he’s not as foolish as she thinks.
Relationships: Enola Holmes/Viscount "Tewky" Tewksbury
Comments: 52
Kudos: 754





	wisteria and gypsophila, tulips and chrysanthemums

Enola is like peonies and sunshine, a vast garden of lush roses and bright daffodils. Paeonia, Rosa, Narcissus. But unlike flowers, she cannot be planted or rooted. She can’t be plucked from the fields and folded lovingly between the pages of one of Tewksbury’s books, preserved, nor would he ever want to press her. Enola is more suited to the small shade cast under a canopy of petals, the anonymity of cool, loamy earth under a bright sky. She wants her mystery, her dignity.

Tewksbury often thinks she wants him, but it’s difficult to discern when she usually appears with riddles on her tongue, a favour she would like him to help with, or a quest. She lets him fill the vase in her sitting room with wisteria and gypsophila, tulips and chrysanthemums, and knows she does not care for flowers. He equally knows that she carries around a book of their meanings, sees her toying with the corners of it when she thinks he isn’t looking.

He knows he isn’t nearly as smart as her, thinks there isn’t a man alive who is, but he’s not as foolish as she thinks.

The day she had given him her address, she had intended it as a gift. It’s still unusual, scandalous for them to be meeting alone in her quarters, but Enola has never minded much for the propriety of society. It’s not that she doesn’t understand it, she just doesn’t see the harm. Besides, she always says, he’s nearly slept on her floor before.

He’s pointed out many times that their meeting was an unusual situation, that the idea of them sharing a room then would have been deeply uncivilized otherwise, but she sees it as semantics. He sees it as the headline of a newspaper – Lord Tewksbury, Marquess of Basilweather, philandering and unwed.

His mother thinks so, too.

His mother thinks he should be married.

Enola sees this as a mystery, one of those funny things about Tewksbury that she’s never been able to fully unravel, even when she visits for an afternoon to walk the forests with him. She likes him best when he can leave his cane and hat indoors, can instead sit cross-legged beside her in his childhood treehouse, spend a few hours talking through clues with her or showing her his favourite books.

She knows that when he asks her to stay, he means to marry him.

She knows that, for a man in his position, his requests can mean nothing else.

So, she keeps her own address, visits when she pleases, lets him fill her home with soft petals and cakes.

He waits for her to come back from cases, listens to her gushing stories and laughter. Counts the days as his mother counts them, sits in boring political sessions, politely declines blushing ladies.

Enola feigns to not see this, but her willful ignorance spills through the halls of Basilweather, coats each inch of marble tile with knowing. As months stretch into years, so does the tedium of their steps, their half-waltz.

He kisses her sometimes, despite the wrongness, the knowing.

He kisses her, to make sure she knows everything, anything. He kisses her hands, and more scandalously, her cheeks. One night, when they’re eighteen and the moon above is beginning to wane, their ballroom best dishevelled from chasing a jewel thief around Lord Sigmund’s annual mid-winter gala, he kisses her lips.

He takes her hands, cold from the evening chill, and presses their foreheads together like he owes her a secret. She’s still out of breath, hair slipping from her braids and sticking to her neck in wisps, and leans in like science has ribbon around her shoulders, tugging like gravity. As if she knows his secret. As if she will allow it.

She allows his hands to rest around her waist, lets him run his palms over layers of silk and corset ribbing. Lets him murmur sweetness into her neck.

The garden around them is thick with bougainvillea and creeping vines, lavender and marigold. He imagines someone will see. He imagines they should be wed.

She doesn’t say, but takes his arm and lets him tuck away her stray hairs, lets him guide her to their carriage. People will definitely see, and say things, and preen. Tewksbury will certainly receive strongly worded correspondence from the desk of Mycroft Holmes. But as Enola sighs and closes her eyes in the dark cabin, lets herself be lulled by the clopping hooves of the horse, Tewksbury thinks that perhaps he knows her secret, too.

The papers, miraculously, are far more concerned with the jewel thief. Enola is furious. They’ve attributed the capture to the wrong Holmes.

**Author's Note:**

> So, apparently I was more emotionally invested in this film than I thought.


End file.
